Masters Thesis

Business Consulting Project for Ollivier Corporation

[ABSTRACT ONLY; NO FULL TEXT] As Group MKRR, we met with Ollivier Corporation President and C.E.O. Louis Boulgarides. He advised us of his current position as a security systems integrator looking to move into the in-person security guard side of his business. We obtained a 2020 Vision Plan containing a list of customers, financial information, and the last several years of milestones. We sought out to complete an analysis of the current state of the security industry, the possibility of Ollivier moving successfully into the in-person guard line of business, and if current clients would likely be interested in these additional services. We submitted a survey to twenty-eight of Ollivier's current clients to assess their overall satisfaction with Ollivier services. We also conducted interviews for a qualitative analysis when we were unable to gain a significant sample number for our quantitative research. Individually, I provided an experienced overview of the security industry to my group members. I had worked in the security industry for seven of the last twelve years; and, interestingly, I had worked indirectly for Mr. Boulgarides. It was from this prior work experience that I reached the conclusion that Mr. Boulgarides was likely an acquisitional player in his field. I determined he would need to expand into residential markets, as losses in commercial markets would call for profits to be located elsewhere in order to recover loss of revenue. I drafted the initial section on Ollivier's weaknesses as part of a SWOT analysis, as well as the initial Porter's analysis on the security alarm systems industry. I drafted the initial section on residential HOA markets as a potential growth opportunity. Finally, I followed-up with survey respondents for a telephone interview to elaborate on their responses. I elicited more respondents by sending follow-up email survey requests, then compiled the data in conjunction with the information obtained from the phone interviews for an overall qualitative assessment of our research results. We found that Ollivier has a very long accounts receivable collection process. Also, the company has a high customer concentration, a high segment concentration, and a large amount of debt. On the marketing side, Ollivier utilizes a few names-subsidiary companies include Smart Site & IPG, all offering some security service. A tightening on financials, the addition of more customers to address customer and segment concentration issues, expansion into new market segments, and the beefing up of marketing to include a single brand name, a series of website testimonials, and a real presence that will capture new potential customers are ways that Ollivier can achieve the growth it needs to become a dominating force within its industry.

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